


i was always yours

by Heereweare



Category: Andi Mack (TV)
Genre: M/M, angstttt cryyyyy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 10:59:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17263007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heereweare/pseuds/Heereweare
Summary: If you had asked TJ Kippen if he believed in soulmates at age sixteen, he would’ve had to answer with a yes. It wasn’t that he believed in destiny or fate; more that he met the person he knew he wanted to marry at the age of six. There were times where he would pull away hard from Marty, the boy with stars in his eyes, but he always ended up crashing right back into him.





	i was always yours

If you had asked TJ Kippen if he believed in soulmates at age sixteen, he would’ve had to answer with a yes. It wasn’t that he believed in destiny or fate; more that he met the person he knew he wanted to marry at the age of six. There were times where he would pull away hard from Marty, the boy with stars in his eyes, but he always ended up crashing right back into him. 

He couldn’t quite remember the first day he met Marty; in fact, the early years were a bit of a blur to him. There were small things he remembered; playing tag in his backyard, their first game of 1v1, multiple sleepovers filled with pranks and movie marathons. TJ knew that he was smitten from the beginning; there was never a time where Marty didn’t make his heart race. 

Thirteen was the age that his crush on Marty blossomed into realization. His friends were definitely annoyed by how much he talked about the smallest things he did. He freaked out about the smallest things that happened, but he couldn't quite help himself. Marty had an effect on him that no other person could replicate. 

Literal hours were spent thinking of the other boy; if he liked him back, what kissing him would feel like, if he’d ever go to prom with him. The problem with being best friends with your crush is that you spend quite a lot of time with them, so you end up analyzing hours and hours of literal nothing every day. Playing Minecraft wasn’t very swoon-worthy, but it was to TJ when it was played with Marty. 

And all of it was lost in eighth grade when the other boy met someone new. Slowly, Marty started to cancel plans more and more, and it confused him. He was his best friend, why didn’t he want to spend every weekend with him? So when he went to one of the guys on the team, he was shocked to hear that he had started ‘talking to’ some other guy. He cried in his bathroom for an hour and didn’t talk to Marty for a week.

It was the longest he had gone without talking to him since they had first met.

The Friday after he found out about the guy he invited Marty over. They didn’t talk about why TJ had been avoiding him, or who Marty had been with that made him not even notice his absence, or why they were much quieter than usual. They just played basketball, guarding their hearts as much as they guarded the ball.

Time passed, and though things were rocky in TJ’s mind, they were okay. They never talked about the time period where he withdrew from the other; eventually, the boy moved on, and TJ was there to comfort Marty. He’d never give the ability to make him happy away. 

Entering junior year, things were uneventful for the two of them. TJ kept pining helplessly, and Marty stayed oblivious to it all. In January, out of the blue, Marty turned to him and asked, “Hey, if we still don't have a date by the week before prom, we should go together.” TJ choked, almost fainted, but managed to agree.

Flash forward to the week before prom, and neither of them had found a date. He couldn’t help but wonder if Marty didn’t find one on purpose or not. They rented tuxes, found a matching tie color, and bought tickets. Marty insisted on paying. It drove him insane.

The actual night of prom was spent laughing, dancing, and talking with friends. He was never quite alone with Marty, but he made an effort to never leave his side. When the first slow song came on, he wasn’t quite sure what to do. Do they dance? Was this even considered a real date? But Marty grabbed his hand, led him onto the floor, and danced with him. He couldn’t breathe properly for three days.

A year went by, and graduation hit them like a bus. TJ had to say goodbye to a lot of people that day, but really the only person he was upset about leaving was Marty. He was going off to a school states away on a track scholarship. TJ himself was going to the east coast to play basketball. Later that night, still in tears, he went on google maps to calculate the difference. 4,236 miles. 

Saying goodbye to him and watching him board the fight two months later was the hardest thing he had ever done. 

A semester flew by, and TJ was still hopelessly in love with Marty. Every time they texted, called, or face timed made him the happiest person in the world. When he was a kid, the first person he would go to was always Marty, and that didn’t change when they were worlds away. 

Even though he loved face timing the other, he was ecstatic to finally see him face to face after months of being away. They were both going home for winter break; a whole month full of just him and Marty. Seeing him for the first time was incredible. They both ran to each other with grins spread wide over their faces, ecstatic to finally hug the other. He couldn't help but wonder if people watching them thought they were boyfriends. 

The first week and a half was spent catching up. The two of them, plus their families, constantly spent time together playing games and talking. All throughout middle school and high school, he was confident that Marty did  _ not _ like him back, but this trip was starting to make him doubt that.

Every time they played Egyptian Rat Slap and touched hands literally made TJ go insane. He ignored the small thought in the back of his mind that called him sad for still obsessing over literally nothing. December twenty-second, three days before Christmas, Marty decided to give him something big to freak out over. He told him he met a girl named Buffy. 

He pretended to listen to him talk about the girl for a few minutes, but he genuinely couldn’t focus. Everything inside of him hurt. For a week, he thought his feelings might be at least slightly reciprocated, but he couldn’t have been more wrong. 

TJ liked to think that he was known for fucking good things up. It’s what he did time and time again, with friends, projects, school, life. He never thought he’d mess up everything with Marty. Looking back, he realized he couldn’t have been more wrong. 

While he was talking about her eyes,  _ her eyes _ , he reached up and kissed him.

_ Shock. Confusion. Hatred. Doubt. Sadness. Uncertainty. _ TJ could spend years trying to figure out what emotion the look on Marty's face portrayed and he would never decode it. He wasn’t even sure how he felt in the moment. After Marty had exclaimed, “What the heck, dude,” he bolted. He barely heard the ‘wait’ yelled at him as he slammed the door and ran. Marty didn’t run after him. 

He didn’t talk much to him for the rest of the trip after that. TJ had spent quite a lot of time crying while writing pages and pages of words only to tear them up. He made it pretty easy for Marty to avoid him. 

After Christmas, they started to talk again. Marty asked him about it once, but he told him to forget about it. All he said was “you know, I used to like you too. Junior year. It’s why I asked you to prom.” He laughed a bit. “Kinda assumed you didn’t like me back, so I moved on.” TJ wrote 15 pages that night on how he felt and burned them all the next day. No one questioned him. 

When they had to leave to go back to college, it was much less sappy than the first time. TJ had considered staying behind, as his flight was much later in the day, but he could never pass up the opportunity to see him for a few more hours. 

TJ eventually took note of Marty and moved on as well. He met a cute guy, went on a few dates with him. Cyrus was no Marty, but his hand fit well in his own, and he was a good distraction. 

TJ had given his heart to Marty the day they had met, six years old. It was a dangerous game that he had played, and in the end, he had lost. You don’t spend 10 years hopelessly pining after someone for it to go away once rejected. He dated Cyrus for a while, but he eventually broke up with him. Told him “his heart wasn’t in it.” asked him if there was someone else. He took his silence as a yes and never talked to him again. 

Marty and TJ hadn’t stopped talking after the kiss, but there was always a strain between the two of them. They had missed their chance; 16 and in love with the world ahead of them, but the world wasn’t quite as easy as either of them expected it to be.

**Author's Note:**

> this is 100% a self projection fic oops, but i love it a lot and im really proud of it?? it's very,, different from the types of fics ive written for this fandom, but i genuinely love it, and i'm definitely gonna write more like this. i hope you liked it !!


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